


les rêves des amoureux sont comme le bon vin

by dashieundomiel



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 08:57:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17505536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashieundomiel/pseuds/dashieundomiel
Summary: Combeferre cooks. Enjolras helps.





	les rêves des amoureux sont comme le bon vin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marschallin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marschallin/gifts).



Enjolras takes the stairs down from the apartment two at a time, not finding Combeferre upstairs. He is promptly told off by the landlady passing through with laundry for making so much noise, and what a disgrace it is that she can’t do anything in her own building, what with people running up and down the stairs at every hour and now the other one is in her kitchen using up the good firewood—  
  
“He’s in the kitchen?” Enjolras interrupts.  
  
She shrugs her shoulders against the weight of the basket. “Where else would he be? All of Paris and he’s in my kitchen. Where else?”  
  
Enjolras helps her carry the laundry before heading to the kitchen.

  
A thick aroma hangs over the kitchen, one of overripe sunshine and young gardens. Enjolras finds Combeferre leaning over a pan on the stove with his sleeves rolled up, engrossed.  
  
“What’s that?”  
  
Combeferre startles and looks up. “Supper.”  
  
The smell draws him in. Enjolras peers over his shoulder and observes the tomato, the zucchini, the eggplant. “ _Ratatolha_ ,” he says in surprise.  
  
“Yes. Or ratatouille, if you will.”  
  
“I didn’t know you cooked.”  
  
Combeferre shrugs it off. “I have been known to on occasion. Can you hand me that spoon?”  
  
Enjolras does. “Why now?”  
  
Combeferre slides some diced eggplant into the pan with a knife and mixes it into the oil, turning it over and over. “My mother used to make this all the time in the summer,” he says. “I suppose I miss home. Don’t you ever get homesick?”  
  
“Paris is my home,” says Enjolras.  
  
“Of course.” He starts work on an onion, peeling away the papery layers. His dark hair falls in his face.  
  
“So you are making supper for us tonight?”  
  
“Naturally you don’t have to, if you don’t want—”  
  
“No, no, I would,” Enjolras assures him. “I just never knew that you cooked.”  
  
“I’m not particularly good at it, I’m afraid. I could use some help,” he adds.  
  
Enjolras backs off. “You know perfectly well I don’t know how.”  
  
“How many times have you tried?” Combeferre holds out a knife.  
  
Enjolras takes it, uncertain.  
  
“Surely, you of all people know what to do with a knife.” He hands him a zucchini.  
  
Enjolras stares it down, then lifts his knife and cuts into it roughly, managing to hew a piece off and nearly a piece of his finger with it.  
  
“Well— well, you’re not supposed to stab it,” says Combeferre, clearly attempting to hide his laughter. He has a soft laugh, and his eyes smile more than his mouth. “We are not attempting to wage war against the vegetables.”  
  
“Then surely you of all people know that this is rather different,” says Enjolras sourly. The knife feels clumsy in his hands. An ignoble weapon, he thinks. Evil.  
  
Combeferre reads his mind with a glance at his face. “I’m sorry for laughing, Enjolras. Here—” —he places his hand over his, his deft surgeon’s fingers guiding him to make clean, even slices. “Like so.” A zucchini is quickly reduced to a pile of rounds. “And then we dice it, like this.” The crisp greenish-white flesh of the vegetable yields easily to his knife in his grip, though he uses less force than Enjolras tried. Gentle. “Knives can be used to heal, too, you know,”  
  
Enjolras concedes his point with a shake of his head to flip the hair out of his eyes.  
  
“You try.” Combeferre removes his hand. Enjolras feels the absence of its warmth, though the room is hot from the fire.  
  
Enjolras at first wishes he were waging war on the vegetables. He forces a mortal struggle against the zucchini with the point of his knife and wins, but his hand is strained and he remembers this is not what Combeferre did. He changes the balance of the knife in his hand to approximate it. He tries again. The cutting does come easier, he finds, and is much faster. It’s easy to get lost in the rhythmic chopping, the narrow-edged sound the knife makes against the wood. And then he’s finished, and presents a plate of decently chopped zucchini to Combeferre.  
  
A proud smile threatens to depose the inoffensive line of Combeferre’s mouth as he scrapes it into the pot. “See, I knew you could do it,” he says. “I’ve never known there to be a thing you couldn’t do when you put your mind to it.”  
  
“I can think of a few,” Enjolras says dryly.  
  
“Ah, not yet, _bessai_ , but if anyone can do it it’s you,” Combeferre says, and hands him an onion.  
  
“We’ll see,” he replies, but a familiar glow fills him as he chops the onion. “That reminds me— I did come to tell you something,” he remembers. “Have you heard Polignac has been appointed to the ministry of foreign affairs?”  
  
Combeferre is silent for a moment as he stirs the pot. “That is unsurprising,” he says finally.  
  
“They say it is likely he will become president of the council.”  
  
“It well may be.”  
  
“That would be a grave threat to the charter and all the little progress that’s been achieved.”  
  
“So what are we to do?”  
  
The onion makes his eyes sting and water, which he hurriedly blinks away. “Nothing, yet.” It would be imprudent to do anything now, when nothing is certain. “But stay alert.” He hands him the chopped onion.  
  
Combeferre nods as he adds it to the mix. The vegetables finished, Enjolras sits back and watches him work. He is handsome, to Enjolras’s eyes, when he cares to think about such things. He has a tenacious nose and stubborn mouth and kind, weary eyes. He wears an expression of intense concentration, as he does when Enjolras has seen him suturing flesh or bandaging a wound, but here there is an added gentleness present; his arms that are strong from sawing bone are delicate in their creation of something new. He bends low and tends the flame carefully. Spices and herbs Enjolras does not know the name of are added.  
  
“And voila.” Combeferre extinguishes the heat. He pours the finished stew into two bowls, and hands one to Enjolras. He sits down beside him and wipes his glasses on his sleeve. “How does it taste?”  
  
Enjolras picks up his spoon and takes a bite. It burns his tongue a little. “Very good.”  
  
Combeferre beams.  
  
It does remind him of Provence, the summery earthy taste of the Sunday markets he remembers vaguely from childhood. “What do you think?”  
  
Combeferre tastes it. “Well, I think my mother does it better,” he says, but he seems well-pleased with himself. He pushes his glasses up on his nose and smiles.  
  
“It’s delicious.”  
  
“I’ll make it for you every day when we go back, if you like.” He’s teasing, Enjolras knows, but there’s sincerity underneath. “We’ll have a little garden plot to grow the vegetables. After— after everything is over, of course.”  
  
There is so much work to be done, Enjolras thinks, and so many obstacles, and so little time. The tension in the city rises like the tide, threatening to flood. Piling straws on the camel’s back. And Provence is slow moving and hot and he cannot imagine leaving Paris for it, even if there _was_ to be an after for him— but just once he allows himself to sit back and imagine a place where the world is quiet and they can tend a garden. He touches Combeferre’s hand under the table. “I would like that,” he says.  
  
They leave a bowl out for the landlady to make up for the firewood.  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> rat combeferre


End file.
